'The Day We Found the Universe'

Famous astronomy anecdote: It's 1923, and astronomer Harlow Shapley, the leading proponent of the theory that the Milky Way is the one and only galaxy, gets a letter from Edwin Hubble. Shapley reads it, turns to a colleague and says, "Here is the letter that has destroyed my universe." Marcia Bartusiak's new book is the backstory of that anecdote.

At issue are faint wisps of light known as spiral nebulae. Astronomers first detected them in the 18th century. There were dozens of them -- no, hundreds. Their nature was furiously debated. One camp argued that they were within the Milky Way, solar systems in the making -- clouds of dust and gas with an embryonic star at the center. The other camp argued that they were agglomerations of stars -- "island universes" -- that were outside the Milky Way and were small and faint only because of their immense distance.

The debate took a couple of centuries to play out. In the meantime, under scrutiny by ever larger telescopes, the spiral nebulae proliferated. There were thousands, perhaps millions of them. (Billions, it turns out.) For a while the island-universe theory was ascendant. Then contradictory observations pointed to the baby-solar-systems theory. We get all the way to the 1920s with the nebulae still a mystery, and astronomers still trying to figure out the scale of the universe.

The story of the spiral nebulae is a familiar one to astronomy buffs, but Bartusiak's intelligent and engaging book may well become the standard popular account. Some of the early chapters could have benefited from a red pencil here and there to excise unneeded verbiage, but that problem fades as the author hits her stride.

More problematic is the comprehensiveness of the tale. There are moments when I found myself despairing at the arrival on the scene of yet another astronomer, yet another telescope, yet another set of photographic plates, yet another incremental teasing of the truth from the murky heavens. Bartusiak cannot be accused of leaving anyone important out of her story. Indeed, there are almost as many characters as there are stars in the sky. Some of them, such as Shapley and Hubble, are charismatic and quirky; some never quite seem as interesting as their telescopes. However, there is a fine set piece on Henrietta Leavitt, a Harvard assistant who, laboring in this rigidly patriarchal field, realizes that certain stars serve as standards for measuring cosmic distances (she might have won a Nobel Prize had she lived longer).

[More after the jump]

The astronomers practice heroic science. The telescopes get bigger. The mountaintops get higher and colder. The universe becomes clearer: The nebulae are, indeed, island universes -- separate galaxies outside the Milky Way. Shapley's "Big Universe" turns out to be but a meager portion of Hubble's galaxy-strewn cosmos.

Bartusiak's book is, ultimately, about how hard science is, how taxing, particularly when you are trying to excavate truth from a grudging universe. The astronomers get it wrong about as often as they get it right. Just when a consensus seems to be forming, it is obliterated by a new observation.

There was no single breakthrough, but many of them, as well as many mistakes and misapprehensions. Hubble famously gets the credit for solving the mystery -- a certain kind of variable star he found in the Andromeda nebula revealed that Andromeda is a separate galaxy at great distance -- but his discovery was built on the labor and insights of so many others. Let's throw some love to Vesto Slipher. And Heber Curtis. Oh, and one more thing: Those distant spiral nebulae are racing away from us. Hubble figured that out, too, and with it the most compelling evidence that we live in an expanding universe.

Modern astronomy uses magnificent tools to intensify our perception. The universe says, "Look at me." The astronomers oblige, and you know how it turns out: The universe gets much bigger and much more interesting than we ever could have imagined.

Wow Joel - what a great book review. You really are one of those Renaissance-type men I have heard tell of.

I am always amazed how recent is our understanding of just how big, how absolutely huge, the universe really is. (Gosh we're all impressed down here I can tell you.)

Anyway, outside of being a very impressive bit of science, Hubble's work shows how science and philosophy interact. Science uncovers cool new facts, and philosophy has to figure out what it all, you know, really means. And the size of the universe is clearly one such fact that we are all still struggling with.

This morning, I read a rather sad local story of the death of a radio DJ, Calvin Walker, who felt that the Big Radio stations had ruined radio. In it, they mentioned he would play all of the 11-minute version of Steppenwolf's "Pusher" and man, that took me back. The long versions of songs never got picked up by radio much. Quickly searching the archives, I found a 21-minute version. Only the last 11 minutes are the actual music. Radio marginalized all the long forms. Granted, many of them really were too long. Some were not.

I sometimes tell prospective paleontology students that if they have a problem with being wrong, vertebrate paleontology might not be the field for them. If they enjoy having to correct their own mistakes, it could be perfect for them.

Interestingly, I didn't have to sign in. The box was open already when I scrolled down. Hmmmmmmmmmm.

Anyhow, I want to ask the scientific Boodlers among us, if they know or are interested in knowing, if there is any activity in the long-term capture and use of solar and wind power. That is to say, and in light of an Op-Ed piece in the WaPo a couple of days ago, during times of overcast skies or no wind (or winter months in Scandinavia -- especially in the above-the-Arctic-Circle areas), how will solar power and/or wind power be effective or efficient? Does that mean that we've still got to turn to fossil fuel? I wonder, really, how that can be remedied. My scientific skills, such as they might have been, are, like Mudge's, centuries old (and I can't fake it like Mudge can, 'cause I start giggling and that gives me away). My curiosity and entrepreneurial ideating, however, are still in fine form. It's just the implementation and execution that's beyond me.

I'm still looking at my "filing cabinets on the floor" and sighing. But the afternoon is still young and I might just putter around here. If I didn't get sun poisoning so quickly (sun block notwithstanding), I would be out in this weather. But I do, and so I'm not.

It is a matter of economics, ftb. Since electricity cannot effectively be stored, you can theoretically get wind or solar-generated power onto a grid to move it to locations that aren't suited to generating it locally, but it would be prohibitively costly to run VHV lines all around the world. Therefore, the potential for those sources (and tidal, geothermal, etc.) is more or less limited to areas that have sufficient of the natural renewable resource locally. Wind power has become an increasingly large part of the mix in Alberta and parts of Quebec, but it can't replace conventional thermal generation or nuclear in cost/benefit balance. Because Quebec has a *huge* VHV transmission infrastructure in place, it moves windpower about as far as is possible, within this model, exporting a lot of it as well.

Perfect weather here in the banana belt. 63F slight breeze. Mowed four lawns without breaking a sweat.
The rescue airedale survived the night with the resident welsh terrier although the night's sleep was broken up with bouts of welsh barking every time the airedale changed positions.
He is a BIG boy.

Joel writes:
Bartusiak's book is, ultimately, about how hard science is, how taxing, particularly when you are trying to excavate truth from a grudging universe.

'Tis writ, "In the beginning was the Word."
I Pause, to wonder what is here inferred.
The Word I cannot set supremely high:
A new translation I will try.
I read, if by the spirit I am taught,
This sense, "In the beginning was the Thought..."

From Goethe's Faust, from the prologue of writer John M. Barry's "The Great Influenza: The Deadliest Plague in History."

Barry, in his prologue and first chapter, deals with the same issues (as astronomers, according to Bartusiak) that medical men (and women!) of science faced when confronted with the new strain of inluenza responsible for the 1918 pandemic.

In the next graf, after the passage from Faust, Barry explains:

"Upon 'the Word' rested authority, stability, and law; 'the Thought' roiled and ripped apart and created--without knowledge or concern of what it would create."

I see that the CDC has already issued its first MMWR (Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report) regarding this spring's swine flu outbreak:

I think that the general idea (eventually, you know?) for intermittent power sources like solar and wind is that you convert the energy into hydrogen for later use. There's lots of water available to be split into hydrogen & oxygen, even if the water isn't always where we want it when we want it.

Very pleasant here this afternoon, about 75 degrees. I noticed that the inside temp and the outside temp are the same. This is the first time this year that I consider this to be a good thing. Just finished planting snap pea plants and pea pod and lettuce seeds. My back survived it but I think a small nap wouldn’t hurt.

Great Kit Joel. Your review makes me want to read the book which is a great compliment as I don’t do sciency things very well. The universe with all those distances and space overwhelm my small brain.

I like the idea of solar-powered air conditioning, because when the sun is fiercest, you have the best generating conditions. It ought to work on autos; I don't know how much it could contribute to total AC load requirements.

A while back a friend was researching storing compressed air - power - in huge man-made cavities in salt domes. This was out of Houston, where salt domes are a dime-a-dozen. Dunno how the numbers came out. There's always hydrogen generation for power capture. Geothermal heat pumps, if configured right, can store energy from summer to winter peaks. That's tricky to understand but deeply neat to me.

Prelimary test results from students with respiratory illness at a high school in Queens, New York, look like swine flu. Seven of eight tests came back positive, but it must be stressed, as CNN pointed out, that results are preliminary.

Samples from students stricken at Queensborough High School on Long Island are on their way to CDC in Atlanta for more rigorous testing. CDC to issue its test results tomorrow. All New York state doctors now advised to be on the alert for symptoms of swine flu.

Two confirmed cases of swine flu in Kansas.

Local CNN affiliate KABB moved quickly on the Schertz swine flu story involving the Henshaw family-- airing on the 3 p.m. CNN broadcast. A few parents withdrew their kids from the high school in Cibolo, northeast of San Antonio, at the end of this week, CNN reported. More social distancing. Important local segment airing nationally.

California is probably one of the places (sunny climate, mountains near the coast) that will eventually get into solar/wind-powered hydroelectric storage. When the snowpack melt is no longer sufficient to provide provide water for drinking/agricultural irrigation/power generation needs, we may see vast wind/solar energy farms which power the distillation and then pumping of water into reservoir lakes for storage. It's even less energy efficient than hydrogen storage, but it's cheaper, and the water flow will probably be critical.

Now - What to do with all of the leftover salt? Dammit! There's no end to these problems, is there?

We briefly tried growing asparagus. What I remember is that you weren't supposed to harvest it till the 3rd year, and it's a very heavy feeder (need to add lots of organic fertilizer). I still have a stalk or 2 that comes up in the bed where we planted it 15 years ago. We didn't have much success with it. We've also got horseradish still coming up, despite trying to discourage it.

All my outside crops are up - sugar pod peas, lettuce, spinach, radishes. Here's hoping the slugs don't get to them before I do.

laloomis - The flu story really is riveting, isn't it? As soon as I saw the initial reports that mentioned identical (and unusual) strains in geographically-separated individuals with no obvious mutual contacts, I thought, "Hang on for the ride. Here we go!"

And, Yoki, my dear, I am sooooo impressed (and not at all surprised) by your energy chops. So, let's get cracking on creating some technology to do what we want and need it to do. After all, if "they" can put a man on the moon (*why can't they put them all there?*), "they" oughta be able to collect and store solar and wind power energy, eh?

bad sneaks I am great, been running errands most of the day. Compared to previous surgeries this was so easy to recover from I would say pretty much pain free from the start - and I can eat what I want - Yea.

Hope you are taking care of your back.

TBG congrats to your daughter.

Hot day here but an afternoon storm is just moving through, black skies and windy dropping maple flowers everywhere, magnolias where bursting forth in bloom all over today - close to eighty here.

They are resilient and troublesome creatures. I foresee a horrific mess that you will eventually have to clean up, because they're not quite self-destructive enough to wipe themselves out and save you the trouble.

Withdrawing rah-rah for weekend/daytime anchor Fredericka Whitfield of CNN. She had John M. Barry, author of "The Great Influenza" on later in the hour and cut him off when he was discussing the flu pandemics of the 20th century. Barry was responding to a question Whitfield had asked him. There were pandemics in 1918, 1968--and Whitfield cut him off. And in 19xx and 19xx? (Yeah, I could Google it.)

If CNN is going to get Barry in New Orleans to go on air, CNN ought to at least have the courtesy to let him answer the question posed to him or give him a longer segment of airtime. Barry's most important utterance: The virus itself will determine the outcome of the spread, the government mostly playing catch-up.

Reporting in the 4 p.m. hour, CNN reports that that Steele High School in Cibolo will be closed for the coming week. The high school is in the county adjacent to us--Guadalupe, less populated and more rural than our Bexar County. CNN reported that residnets of Guadalupe County are being asked to avoid gathering in large crowds.

This is so laughable!!! We're at the end of winding down from two weeks of citywide Fiesta events, the biggest crowd-congregators happening this weekend. Yesterday's Battle of the Flowers Parade, the King William Parade and Street Fair today, and the Battle of the Flowers Parade tonight. Thousands attend these culminating events, including lots of folks from Guadalupe County.

There's something to be said for knowing the local lay of the land--and events.

Well, Bob, you do have a point. Truth be told, I have a vast, worldwide, group of men whom I absolutely adore and would hate to see them sent to the moon (unless, of course, I would be able to go with them).

That being said, the line is pretty funny.

*clearing throat from pollen and being called on the line*

Loomis, I increased the size of the font by hitting Ctrl+ a couple of times. That's apparently for Firefox, which I use most of the time. It works fine, and I can see the font comfortably. Try it, and it may help you.

Scientific knowledge is indeed incredibly work-intensive. My own pet example is a book in the "Monographs in population biology" series from Princeton: "Evolutionary ecology across three trophic levels: goldenrods, gallmakers, and natural enemies" by Warren Abrahamson and Arthur Weis. The book is based on some 25 years of meticulous field work, much of which must have been numbingly boring. What they found out is, however, impressive.

Busy weekend here. Spectacular orchid show and sale here in town, big art show in Melbourne, Palm and Cycad Society meeting at a spectacular creekside yard, London Symphony continuing its every-other-year stays in Daytona Beach, of all places.

bobs, hereabouts the natural enemies of goldenrods include allergic people, who viciously uproot them at the first sign of foliage or flower. In fact, they may be the most dangerous and potent natural enemies around because they are absolutely unstoppable, and their wrath knows no bounds.

Boodling from my deck in the sun of an 80+ deg. F. day, with a nice cool glass of Cava at my side, and my laptop, well, in my lap. No shirt, no shoes, no problem. Hey, it' my flippin' place.

I can remember several times in my life when I experienced those tunnel-vision moments when my perception of the depth and breadth of spacetime and everything in it -- shifts. That feeling of looking at myself through a telescope backwards - the perspective of the universe as I imagine it - and then seeing myself recede into the distance by several powers of (de?)maginfication.

History goes on all around us; the history of Everything, of the Milky Way, of the Sun and the Solar System, of Earth itself, of life on this planet, of human history of which each we are a small part, but nonetheless, I think, a part.

And we may never even know about the parts we play, consciously or unconsciously, as the vibrations and waves we cause in the Higgs ocean interact with all the other waves of events and possibilities, rendering to each of us our individual perceptions of reality.

Theories of Quantum Mechanics suggest that our very measurements on the tiniest scales - our Observations, if you will - determine our perceptable reality, even as we have the barest understanding of how that happens, how possibility collapses into events. Can this also be true on cosmological scales?

Life millions of years ago was decomposed by bacteria and rendered into petroleum that was refined into gasoline that powers our cars. I bet those plants never saw that coming.

The Butterfly Effect of our being in the Universe, Observing it and attempting to understand it may change Everything for all I know.

Or, simply being a gnat on the Creator's windshield is more than we could ever possibly aspire to be. Again, I don't know.

We live in a big old house of a universe, with lots of really cool stuff in these horsehair plaster walls and hand-blown glass windows (you folks who live in cool old houses - what a great perspective on history). Maybe one day we'll be able to read the measurement marks on the universal joists and the graffiti on the back sides of the spacetime wallboard, if there is any.

Or maybe we'll have to write some ourselves. Perhaps we sort of did that with the Voyager and Pioneer space probes -- sending little gold records and a "For a good time call Earth" plaques.

This Kit makes me realize that I am only two degrees of separation from Edwin Herbert Hubble -- I got to be on good terms with his student, Allan Sandage, when Sandage was in an office down the hall and my office had the nearest coffee pot.

Plus, I aced Sandage's final exam on measuring intergalactic distance scales and distinguishing different interpretations for the apparent recessional velocity of galaxies. Not that I remember any of that stuff now.

Like the Men in the Moon thread - Heinlein's "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" starts with the idea that the Moon is a penal colony, like Eastern Austrailia was.

[Note that I resisted the temptation to misspell "penal" by adding and removing vowels. Thank you.]

And if any aliens do end up finding Earth, chances are all that will remain are the detritus of a great big party (still steaming, most likely). The place will be a *serious* fixer-upper and the Cosmic Homeowner's Insurance isn't likely to pay off the mortgage.

I am back from Maryland Day at the UMd campus. My throat is extremely raw and sore and feeling worse all the time -- more beer may be required. We were in a very loud tent, but with poor feedback on one's own voice, causing one (me) to speak louder and louder and at the high end of my register. Practical upshot: pain.

My construction project was very successful with the audience. Its identity now can be revealed: a model for a planet orbiting a small star at close range, demonstrating the transiting-planet method of detection and characterization used in exploring exoplanets for the EPOXI mission. The star was a 25W incandescent globe. The planet was a paper disc on the end of an aluminum shaft stuck into a boxcar from an N-gauge train on a circular track centered on the star. My original plan was to have a spherical planet made of Sculpey, but it had too much mass and caused to the box car to tip over. My plans for an advanced version include a flatbed rail car, ballasted with lead, and a small spherical planet on the end of a wire mast. Or, maybe, strong magnets on the car's undercarriage to hold it to the rails. We got a visit from a high mucky-muck at the local NASA facility, and from the President of the University -- unfortunately, during the time that I was off wandering around the event to take a break.

Had a visit from CollegequaParkian, appearing virtually incognito in her sunny-day cycling togs. Unfortunately, I was unable to locate her during my break, later in the day.

I thought that this was a silly comment from an article about the current flu outbreak: "But unlike with regular flu, humans don't have natural immunity to a virus that includes animal genes — and new vaccines can take months to bring into use."

Well, yeah, until humans *do* have that immunity. We are not humans, we are DEVO! If it matters, and if it's widespread, and if we survive [until the year 2525] then, by gum, humans WILL have that natural immunity.

But of course, once humans have the immunity, it would no longer be an "animal gene" flu, right?

That's ok Science Tim. Just tell your students/employees you have forgotten more about intergalactic distances than they ever knew.
Science teaches humility, something that political science seems to fail to do.

The weather is changing. After this lovely afternoon the wind came and brought some rain. Tomorrow is supposed to be bad but Monday looks good. of course.

SciTim is kind: I wore oddiments, left over from a play I costumed. The effect is eccentric English garden lady on a wicked cool and nimble bike....and, yes, I am nearly albino and become sick, sick, sick in the first suns of summer. My helmet and sunglasses happen to be YellowJacket sunny side up yolk-tone. TBG and RickoShea have seen this effect.

Off to walk in the heat of the evening and then to watch the Circumlocutory Pants movie that is a chick-flick-o-lay that apparently I. Must. See.

Listen up: all these new ways to zoom the text size are recent innovations many don't know about. They came as news to me in the last 6 months or so. Like "control +" (or minus) the mouse wheel also enlarges text if you hold down "control" key while turning the mouse wheel.

Control + doesn't do anything on my 'puter to increase font size. I'll speak to my husband about this "challenge" once he gets off after working two stints--today and late tonigh--from our home office. Thanks, folks.

More reporting needed here...

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/26/world/americas/26mexico.html

"The newspaper Reforma reported that President Obama, who recently visited Mexico, was escorted around Mexico’s City’s national anthropology museum on April 16 by Felipe Solis, an archaeologist who died the next day from flu-like symptoms. Mexican officials have not confirmed the cause of death."

I cut (push mower) about 2/3 of the backyard tonight, it was getting dark, but I got all the tallest parts (roughly 1 ft. high). Tomorrow I'll rake and redo the whole thing shorter. Nothing like the travails of Ivansmom, though.

My yard isn't large, but when I was growing up I cut ~ 10 acres belonging to my aunts and us on a weekly basis. About 2 acres of it had to be done by hand, which didn't bother me at the time, but now I realize why everyone was happy to turn over the garage and lawn tractor keys to a 10 year old. IIRC, my aunts paid me $7.50 a week and bought batteries for the little transistor radio I listened to while I worked.

Well we have had heavy downpours here, lightning, thunder and wind gusts to 100 km in some areas - fortunately started later in the day so it did not spoil the lovely hot day - so nice when it is hot even when windy - a first this year around here, we even had a humidex reading today.

Growing up I associated thunderstorms with tornadoes (bad). When I moved to the East Coast, and then to California, I learned to enjoy them. After moving back here I was pleased to discover that although once again we must associate them with tornadoes (bad), there are two mitigating factors. One, weather technology has improved enough that often we know when we need to worry about tornadoes. Two, I can still take a deep breath and enjoy the show for its own sake, unless the tornado is projected to actually be over my house.

I've mentioned this before, but back when I was a half of a married couple, we received a black Lab pup as a wedding present. She (Kelly, the dog) grew up in Sacramento (CA) where a thunderstorm was essentially nonexistent. Maybe two, 1985-1989. She then moved with us to southeastern England where they're equally rare. Maybe two, 1989-1992.

Then came Del Rio, Texas. During at least four months of the year, two or three per week. A very, very unhappy & freaked out dog. I had never considered the possibility that a 60+ pound dog might actually want to try to climb on top of my head!

The famous museum is now closed to the public, like most public attractions in Mexico City.

As for Obama, after meeting Solís on the same night he met and praised the works of Colombian author Gabriel Garcia Marquez, he headed off to the Summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago. And that’s where, among other things, Obama shook hands with Venezualan President Hugo Chavez — which was, of course, an OUTRAGE against Democracy, according to U.S. wingnuts. (He was supposed to give Chavez a wedgie.)

But this can now be seen in a whole new crazy light, if you are crazy. Maybe Obama secretly assassinated Chavez with the swine flu!

Hubble? Didn't they name those little broom closets where impromptu office meetings are constantly held by people who are supposed to do some sort of indirect management of projects with an ever-expanding scope?

I was wondering when this would come out. It's well-known that Arkansas (home of the husband of the person fourth in the presidential succession line) and Illinois (home of the person fourth in the presidential succession line) are among the top twenty hog producers in the USA.

For instance, I wholeheartedly believe that Newt Gingrich infected a few giraffes at zoos with foot-and-mouth disease. And that he recently rented himself out as an incubator for this swine flu, just because he's such a warhawk, he doesn't care about international bioterror law anymore.

This is what I believe as a brainwashed, Newt-hating, feminist liberal, especially after consuming a few too many mind-altering drugs.

Um, that business of natural enemies. Goldenrods suffer from gall-forming insects, whose larvae live in neat little houses built by the plants themselves, thanks to genetic instructions provided by the insects. In turn, birds long since figured out that galls contain nutritious, delicious larvae. From a gall insect's point of view, the birds are natural enemies. For an ecologist, it's easy (if tedious) to inspect galls to see how many were opened up and how many produced adult insects. With a bit of effort, it's possible to estimate how much of the goldenrods' energy was diverted into building galls and feeding larvae. And what proportion of the larvae became bird food. It's the economy of nature.

Just watched Frost/Nixon and it was very good.I can see why it was nominated for the oscars.

Dr,no it didn't say Dirt Willies on the worms,just Canadian night crawlers.But I don't think these will be around as long as the last batch.I think they will go swimming tomorrow,maybe me too if it is as hot as it was today.

GWE, I'd never seen Night Crawlers till we moved to Calgary. They have them there aplenty. We'd go out in the evenings and after rains, just to see them on the lawn (we entertained ourselves small and cheap in those days).

I'm sure those wee worms will enjoy the cool swim after the heat, GWE.

All this fishing talk makes me want to go read the Compleat Angler. But it shall have to await when the fishing season opens up in the mountains.

Well, it would seem to be time to switch out the space heaters and the air conditioners... *SIGH*

I'm seeing hopeful signs in the preview coverage of "Star Trek," so I'm wondering what people think about the STBPH idea for May 9. I really hate to say it, but the Uptown in Cleveland Park doesn't appear in the online showtime listings... *SIGH* There's plenty of time to find an alternate, of course, unless someone can do some in-person recon.

I did some checking and seemed to have found some info that ST would indeed be playing at the Uptown theater, only I think I left it in my other pants.

Along with that Universe I've been looking for.

I'm pretty sure that it's playing at some of the local IMAX theaters, though except for the Air & Space museum downtown, they tend to be off the beaten track for out of towners and public transportation.

I don't know much about the swine flu situation, though a very smart friend pointed out to me that there may be small behavioral modifications or public works that may help slow the spread of the virus, such as frequent hand washing and cleaning of public surfaces such as door handles.

Howdy y'all. We are having thunderstorm weather here. That means there is not a thunderstorm right now, but there probably will be. There were storms west and north of here last night. I get to sit in a tent at the Arts Festival and answer questions all afternoon (where are the bathrooms? where is face painting?) but at least I'll be sitting in an enclosed space when the storms break.

OKC is in the news again - the FBI caught & arrested a nut (pretty old guy, too, as armed crimes go) for making Twitter threats connected with our recent Tea Party. An enthusiastic Tea Party supporter, he planned to come to the Capitol steps fully armed and "let the bloodbath begin". They got him that day (not at the Capitol, not armed). I don't know whether to be comforted by the swiftness of the FBI response, or alarmed at the thoroughty of their surveillance.

I must admit, I am charmed at the idea that Obama might have secretly passed swine flu to Chavez with the Infamous Handshake. Obama and the Nats, secretly acting as agents of the State. This would be a nice change for Obama, of course, since usually he's a pretty overt agent of the State.

I almost wonder if that odd debilitating flu-like illness I had in March was swine flu. We all like to personalize the news, after all.

'Morning, Boodle. About to head out to go to the boat to power-wash it and do some spring cleaning. (I'm not klooking forward to it.)

A rather glum one today:

*************
Today in Naval and Aviation History

April 26, 1937: For more than three hours German-built aircraft bomb a small town in Spain, then strafe civilians fleeing to the countryside during the Spanish Civil War. No responsibility for the massacre is ever established, and the nationality of the pro-Franco pilots remains officially unknown (but everybody has a real good guess). The incident inspires artist Pablo Picasso to paint the horror of war in one of his greatest masterpieces, named after the town: Guernica.
*******

Interesting what gets scrubbed from the Web version of articles versus what goes to print.

Yesterday, our local paper reported that the samples taken from the two teen boys in Cibolo-Schertz diagnosed with swine flu were sent from Randolph AFB in town to a military medical post in town for further testing, not directly to the CDC. IIRC (emphasis here), the samples or swabs went to Brooke Army Medical Center, although less likely, they potentially could have been forwarded to Brook City-Base. Not a peep about this in today's paper. I should have nabbed the relevant graf last night.

More interesting is the scrub of info from early reporting about swine flu at the NYT. The reporter had gotten to two officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity--a government official and a flu expert. They said that the people handling this crisis were "newbies." A graf explained how people/leaders are not in place at the CDC, Surgeon General, in the new administration. I should have nabbed these grafs last night.

There will be a press conference about swine flu from the White House at 12:30 Eastern time. Who'll appear? Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, the acting director of the CDC, and DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano. Of these three individuals, whom will you most trust at the podium to speak about swine flu? Would it be the CDC?

More news this morning of cases of suspected swine flu overseas. And didn't Robert Bazell on MSNBC say this a.m. that there is now a suspected case in Connecticut?

Dumb reporting in our own paper this morning, a reporter sent to our local airport to interview Mexican nationals flying home. One fellow who was not vaccinated said he was not worried. His wife and kids had been vaccinated earlier this year. Ummm, what does the term "new strain" mean, fella?

Note that author Barry in "The Great Influenza" calls out that there were three waves comprising the pandemic that broke out in 1918. The first wave was pretty benign, the others? Well, you read the story...

Obama administration officials including U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano are scheduled to hold a briefing on Sunday at 12:30 p.m. Eastern time to provide an update on the outbreak of swine flu, reports said. Napolitano will be joined by Dr. Richard Besser, acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and John Brenna, assistant to the president for Homeland Security.

In the last several years, U.S. hog conglomerates have opened giant swine CAFOs south of the border, including dozens around Mexico City in the neighboring states of Mexico and Puebla. Smithfield Foods also reportedly operates a huge swine facility in the State of Veracruz, where the current outbreak may have originated. Many of these CAFOs raise tens of thousands of pigs at a time. Cheaper labor costs and a desire to enter the Latin American market are drawing more industrialized agriculture to Mexico all the time, wiping out smaller, traditional farms, which now account for only a small portion of swine production in Mexico.

LL: Hope you've had your Sunday brunch before reading the following:

But these are not hermetically sealed environments, and pathogens can enter and exit a CAFO in a number of ways other than via swine workers (or flies, another proven vector of CAFO diseases).

To begin with, some swine CAFO's recover water from their waste lagoons and recycle it back into the animal housing, in order to wash out the barns while also cutting down on dwindling groundwater supplies (a particular concern in parts of Mexico, to be sure). But wildfowl routinely land in CAFO lagoons, where they can easily shed influenza virus into the water. This can also happen at facilities that use water from nearby ponds or rivers.

Good afternoon boodle! Gray, windy, and perhaps snowy day here, but all is well at Chez Frostbitten. Won a shotgun at the banquet last night. (Perhaps the first time that sentence has appeared in the boodle.)

Mr. F has already departed for St. Paul, hoping to get ahead of a storm that appears might hit the Ivansclan rather hard before heading northeast.

Have a request for info from our congressman to complete today. Probably won't yield any stimulus $, not directly anyway, but at least he's asking. In talking to our city council members no one can remember ever before being asked about anything from such a personage.

Have to scoot. Lots to do before the conclusion to Little Dorrit tonight on PBS.

Son of G and I were completely grossed out by the huge cattle places we saw in southern California and Arizona. The only word to describe what the cattle looked like is "teeming." They were crawling over each other in huge, but very cramped, fenced-in areas. And the smell... ew.

If the pig CAFOs are anything like that I wouldn't be surprised if disease is spreading easily from there.

CNN's Elizabeth Cohen reported four mild cases of swine flu in Canada, following the press briefing from the White House. Articles about the cases of swine flu in Nova Scotia now coming on the web.

At the press briefing, mention of a confirmed case in Ohio--not Connecticut, as MSNBC's Robert Bazell asserted earlier during the morning.

Most interesting facet, for me at least, about the press briefing is how unprepared some of the media reps are to handle the topic of science/biology/emergency preparedness. Makes a case for big media outlets to have someone--such as Lawrence Altman, a physician who reports for the NYT--on staff. Who was that older woman with the short red hair who asked such ridiculous questions? You'd think the reporters would do a little prep or web searching or phone calling before entering the briefing room. But, hey, it's Sunday? Viruses don't take the day off, but apparently most of the press does!

Former "peed" Dr. Richard Besser did well enough at the presser. Too bad some in the media got his title and first name wrong. He's got experience with Hurricanes Katrina (hopefully a learning experience--wonder if this careerist knows Brownie?) and Rita, and last year co-authored research, available on PubMed, about "Improving cross-sectoral and cross-jurisdictional coordination for public health emergency legal preparedness.” Always handy if any quarantines should be imposed at state/local levels. Think he'll be named new CDC honcho?

And why did Mexico send its pig/bird/human flu samples for testing to Canada? How much paperwork *exactly* does the U.S. require to test foreign samples here, this the cause of Mexican samples to be airlifted beyond our northern border?

People in Mexico have died from the swine flu. It seems to be young adults who are getting sick, too, which is different from most flu, I think. I suppose we'll have to wait and see what happens and what the medical folks find out. It would be nice to have all the answers instantaneously, but...

after 3 hours of leaf blowing and a short lunch break.I caught the 2 period of the caps game.With them up 5-1,i deem it safe to go on the river and not worry about the score.Looks like there will be a game 7 after all.

gwe, in the process of starting up the pool pump, I seem to have gathered a small collection of nice Canadian worms, do not know the type but am willing to fax them down, the large one stuck in the pump basket would probably be great as bait if I can figure out how to get it out of the basket without actually touching it - this might be where my eight year old will come in handy.

TV news is actually most on top of the local swine flu story here late this Sunday...

There is more illness (seven cases, but don't know if this includes the two confirmed and one suspected case or these are seven new cases) among children at various grade levels in the Schertz-area school district--though unconfirmed as of yet as swine flu.

Out of an abundance of caution, the 14 schools in the district will close for a week, the closure impacting about 1100 students and 1400 staff. Janitorial crews will continue to work, scrubbing down schools. Many large churches in the Schertz-Cibolo area closed their doors to worshipers today. Large public gatherings have been discouraged.

I just got in from an afternoon sitting in a tent dispensing information at the Arts Festival. The weather was cool and cloudy with a nasty, vicious wind, easily 30 mph or more. The tent didn't blow away but it was open in the back so not much shelter. I was glad to be finished. We're awaiting what look like some very nasty storms coming up from the southwest; there apparently have already been tornadoes west of us. At least I'm inside.

I agree with RD and the others who focus on the real point of the swine flu - the apparently fairly high mortality rate, the prevalence among young healthy adults, and the potential for a pandemic. In that light, I think the federal government and neighboring countries have acted with relative swiftness. Remember, this became more than just a local story on Thursday and Friday. By Sunday we have a public health emergency.

I truly hoped that Obama enjoyed his golf game. All the cases here in the U.S. have been mild, with only one hospitalization thus far.

If the flu virus mutates to become more virulent, then it's a different ballgame. The $64 million dollar question is why were--or are--the cases of swine flu in Mexico more dangerous, causing more deaths and serious illness?

That said, I do hope the administration is working on getting people in the following important positions, as the NYT points out:

The outbreak in the United States comes before President Obama has his full health team in place. His nominee for health secretary, Kathleen Sebelius, has not yet been confirmed by the Senate, nor has the woman he selected to Food and Drug Administration, Margaret Hamburg, a former New York City health commissioner. Mr. Obama has not yet named anyone to run the Centers for Disease Control or the National Institutes of Health.

Isn't it a shame that the Republicans are politicizing Sebelius' appointment over her stand on abortion? So, I suppose you wouldn't want me to poke fun at Perry wanting to secede from the union, either? Is it naive to think that politics are not involved in public health issues? Why, let's look at former CDC boss Julie Gerberding...

Ivansmom-wondered if the storm would hit you. Mr. F was caught on the eastern edge of what seems to be a nasty system stretching all the way to your neck of the woods.

Like bob, I won my shotgun at Ducks Unlimited-the dinner was on a free ticket then we sank a bit into the raffles. This win pushes my lifetime game of chance prize take up considerably. Until last night my two memorable prizes included a fudgesicle in second grade circa '67 and a calculator won at a big do in Lawton OK in '90.

Yep RD Padouk, the mortality rate is pretty low, which is an excellent thing. We do not need another SARS epidemic. I only have to complain about unpaid overtime over the SARS in Canada but I don't want a repeat. It killed quite a number of health professionals and the old folks they were taking care of. That wasn't fun. Still I'm sure the world of bio-safety will be running in high gear this week. They are excitable people.

The Winnipeg facility of Health Canada was called in early. A DA from Cornwall got back from vacation in Mexico about three weeks ago and fell sick to a mysterious flue. HC's Winnipeg people were called in. The guy is doing fine now but he suffered complications from the flue.

The 15 minutes storm of last night caused more damage than I thought. There is not much damage on my lot but quite a number of trees fell elsewhere in the street, a neighbour lost a small section of roof, there was a port-a-potty laying in the middle of somebody's lawn...
The people on the other side of the street are still without power, a big old pine fell on their line. There are 15 houses on each side of the street so we ain't exactly high priority on the repair-to-do list of the power utility. So tonight is spent with the drone of gen-sets in the background.

Wow. larkin, hopeful monster, tomsing, chloebug, and I know I'm missing someone from yesterday - it is wonderful to see all these lurkers and new posters jump in. Howdy y'all! Talk some more!

Yes, we have at least two "supercells" working in the state now, frosti, and one of them seems to be headed this general direction. In local parlance, "supercell" is Bad. We can also talk about mesocyclones and hook echoes - small children who cannot read can decipher a radar hook echo image - but I really hope that tonight I don't have to do so.

laloomis, I'm confused. What difference does it make if the Pres played a round of golf at Andrews? Considering the foursome, it doesn't sound like it was just a bunch of guys out there telling dirty jokes between holes.

Also, how do you go about choosing which journalists shouldn't ever get a day off? Only those who use styling products and therefore don't have fly-away hair?

And of course they're working on getting those positions filled. But it's not like Obama is the one doing the vetting. He has people for that. And law firms. He's not standing at a xerox machine dancing to the beat of the copier drum. Sounds like WHO, CDC, and like organizations have their hands full. Don't see what that has to do with the price of pine tar in Cooperstown.

Funny how Texas is asking for more vaccines. One minute they don't need the US of A, the next they do. I hope that is seen by his constituents the way it's viewed from the outside.

Thanks, y'all. We are good so far. If we had a basement it would be too early to get into it, and it is too early to go share my cousin's basement. We reserve that for real scares (like that time one missed us by half a mile). Right now everything coming our way is still up in the air, so to speak, and with any luck will stay there. I just hope we don't lose power: I am trying vainly and for the last week to catch up to my class. I have enough, in a pinch, to get through tomorrow but I'm trying to finish as much as I can.

Besides, I still have to clean the rabbit cage. Though I suppose I could do that by candlelight. It would be romantic.

I like this too, Frosti, however, I think that the punny ironic delishness of Dickens is some times lost in the PPB Masterness seriousness.

Costumes are good and interesting, as in the show several ranges of styles/subperiods. This is realistic because clothes were extremely expensive those days....relatively speaking. I am about the switch to the Soprano's repeat conclusion. I am a bit addicted but I do not own the dvds. I can repeat entire swaths of Godfather....
Ivansmom, I guess the bathroom is best, sans basement, right? We went into a earthen cellar ala Dorothy's family, in Leavenworth, as it happened. I still remember the smell of that pocket as the sound of a freight train storm kathump-whacked over us.

I suppose I should get back into the habit of watching decent TV. Going to night classes in grad school got me away from the TV, but that was thirty years ago, for heavens sake. I loved Poldark (was that his name?) and of course The Six Wives of Henry VIII and Elizabeth R.

I will be able to see the PBS conclusion on line in the morning. Frosti, aren't all the Brit actor faces lovely and interesting and ordinary? We present the same nose on the young set of androgynous stars....I guess the studios get a volume discount....

About flu alert: cousins in MN who are immune compromised have been alerted to some pre-cautions. About domestic animal reservoirs: I was stunned moving from the land of range cattle -- including dairy bessies -- to the feed lot factory farms. Cows in many spreads stand knee high in liquified cowpatty. We need to rethink everthing these days, including appropriate scale. Who knew that BiG-AG would be a zoonotic disease experiment for us all?

Slyness-The Six Wives of Henry the VIII turned me into a Masterpiece addict at an early age. Somehow missed Poldark until '99 when Hawaii Public TV showed the series every afternoon-like a soap. Great stuff!

Annette Crosbie (Catherine of Aragon in Six Wives, and later Victoria) is in Little Dorrit. Those Brits have staying power.

Got back from the river a couple of hours ago(the river was higher then last week) and the final was 18 fish,none as big as last week's but a lot of fun.I think i caught the same fish twice and could have sworn the 2nd time he said "eat me",but i didn't.

It was really pretty too,bluebells still blooming and mostly everything else had buds on them.The water was still too cold for swimming,but refreshing when I stuck my feet in.

I heard a Murder of Crows,really going on about something,then a shot was fired and they all stopped.Lotsa river wildlife,turtles and birds and Oh Yes the bugs are back. It was a nice float.

Having had a few supercells and tornadoes pass close by - and even overhead - in my time, I, too, have heard the classic 'freight train' sound, and have seen that weird sickly-green sky and yawned and swallowed trying to fight the crazy pressure changes that made my eardrums pop repeatedly like a screen door slamming open and shut in the wind...

Lastly - for the moment, anyway - I imagine President Obama was simply playing golf while the CDC set up spectrmeters, genetic sequencing equipment, centrifuges and bunsen burners in the Oval Office. That's the kind of thing President Bush used to do with all that vacation time he took during his terms, wasn't it?

I, for one, think the Administration is addressing the Swine Flu situatuon appropriately for this country and for our neighbors to this point. President Obama and his team don't need the likes of me critiquing every move they make, especially as my test tube centrifuge and spectrometer operational skills are rusty and somewhat out of date at best. Bunsen burners, on the other hand...

I defy any of you to read Michael Sheuer's op-ed piece on torturing bin Laden and not come away flaming outraged. (This from the guy who was in charge of finding OBL, and couldn't do it.)

Why the Post prints this trash is beyond me.

***********
Today in Nautical and Aviation History

April 27, 1521: Explorer Ferdinand Magellan is killed at Mactan, in the Philippines, during his famous first circumnavigation of the world.
1865: America’s worst steamship disaster occurs as the sternwheeler Sultana’s boiler explodes on the Mississippi River north of Memphis while en route to Cairo, Ill. She is carrying some 2,300 passengers, most of whom are former Union Army prisoners-of-war who were being sent home; 1,547 were killed.
************

Good morning Boodle. To give slyness a break I've set up breakfast this morning. We've got a chafing dish with lovely hot pancakes and a pitcher of maple syrup, a platter of mixed fruit, a bread basket and a vast cauldron of coffee. So let's get in to the ready room, and get ready to launch this Monday.

Yoki, how kind of you! Breakfast will be simply divine, thanks! Yum...

Mudge, I don't recall ever reading about the Sultana. How terrible.

So we have gone from heavy jacket weather to shorts weather in 24 hours. That seems to be normal around here, although it's disconcerting. We turned on the A/C Saturday and it's definitely time to take the down comforter off the bed. No complaints from me about warm weather!

'morning all. Boiler explosions are nasty. The oldest technical code that I know of in the US and Canada, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) Boiler & Pressure Vessel Code was enacted to tame a rash of boiler explosions. the rapid industrialization of the mid-late 19th century wasn't without risk. Small towns were built around manufacturing plants powered by boilers. When the boiler went crack-boom the small town could be obliterated as well. So the blowing-up of the steamer was just another, very deadly, industrial accident. Locomotives were also known to take to the sky on occasion.
"Boiler explosions were the scourge of American life from the mid-19th century through the early 20th. Some 50,000 Americans died every year in these accidents, which, during the 1850s, occurred on average once every four days."
http://pepei.pennnet.com/articles/article_display.cfm?article_id=43862

I was only able to read the first paragraph or two of Sheuer's aritcle before the childish "what-if's" were just too much for me -- "What if Osama Bin Laden were bragging to you that he actually had nuclear weapons, and he knew where they were and when they would go off? Boy, you'd really wish you were allowed to use highly effective "enhanced" techniques to extract information *then*, wouldn't you?" Similar to "What if a huge elephant escaped from the circus, and it got bitten by a rabid bat and got rabies and wandered 50 miles along streambeds from the nearest train station, so nobody would know where to look for it, and then the rabies took hold while it was behind your house and it started a mad rampage -- *then*, you'd realy wish that every private citizen had the right to own a tripod-mounted Gatling gun, wouldn't you?"

Sheuer's piece is not only repugnant, it shows an astonishing lack of contact with reality . First you have to believe that some "techniques" are not torture, then come to the conclusion that the reason they are now banned is so that "people will like us." I'd call it tripe, if it weren't an insult to that putative food product.

As John McCain said, "this isn't about them, it's about us." It pains me to think Sheuer held a position of high responsibility in the CIA. Doesn't he know "never get involved in a land war in Asia" and it's asymmetric warfare correlate "the real danger in terrorism lies in your reaction to it?" You know, things like turning people into torturers, holding prisoners indefinitely without trial, warrantless wiretapping... With Sheuer's kind of thinking OBL might as well retire, we'll destroy ourselves from the inside out.

Good morning boodle. Cold and yucky here today. It would be nice if winter would end before Mothers Day. I am not particularly hopeful.

Someone here pointed out that Texas is asking for more vaccines. Another error, the third that I have caught this morning in a comment, the other two made by female broadcasters.

NOT. Texas/Gov. Rick Perry is asking for more anti-viral medications. There is no vaccine against swine flu once it has erupted. Vaccine manufacturers are wondering if it's even possible to add a swine flu component to the three strains of flu planned for NEXT season's flu vaccine--to make it a total of four strains. You might want to Google "Baxter."

MSNBC's flibbertigibbet Erin Burnett during the Morning Joe program stuck her foot in her mouth at the close of her segment by saying the U.S. is prepared with lots of antibiotics to treat swine flu. Well, I suggest that Erin pick up a basic science text to learn the difference a bacterium and a virus. This is the same mistake that former CNN reporter (now with ABC) Jonathan Karl made when he was reporting about the smallpox (Karl called it a bacteria) threat a handful of years ago, an error that prompted me to send a correction.

Leslie Bohl Jones of our local NBC affiliate station said that it's uncertain how the two teens in Schertz, military dependents, came down with swine flu, since they didn't have contact with pigs. Whaaa? The species jump from swine to human happened some time ago, most likely in Mexico, but that hasn't been determined--yet. What makes the swine flu a threat now (if any doubt, follow the coverage from Mexico) is the human-to-human transmission, plus the fact that swine flu is basically quite infectious--and is not your everyday coronavirus.

Please get some basic science ed, gals, especially you two in front of a television camera.

Reported last night, a team of CDC disease cowboys (I didn't invent the expression) to arrive in Schertz this morning.

Re: the Sultana--today's sea lesson. A book was published March 24 and author Alan Huffman recently did a great hour on the Diane Rehm show talking about the story, his research.

I'm back from the walk, now must confront the housework I've put off for a couple of weeks.

This morning there were earthworms on the pavement the whole way. I used to stop and move them back into the grass, but it occurred to me that my action was an unwarranted intrusion into nature's way. If the worms are visible, they are fair game for the birds, who also need to eat. So I don't feel bad about leaving the worms to wiggle across the road or make a meal for another creature. Besides, if I moved every last one, my back would kill me and it would take all day.

slyness and shriek, one of America's foremost unpublished historians (OK, it was just me), in vol. 1 of his majestic four-volume history of the Elco Company, goes to some pains to compare steam technology vis-a-vis steamboats and steamship versus railroads, and noted the following:

Whereas steamboat disasters such as the Sultana and others tended to kill people in the hundreds (and sometimes over a thousand) at a single time, railroad accidents and disasters tended to kill people only in groups of 10, or 20, or whatever, say a dozen or two, at a time. However, all during the late 19th century, there were many more more railroad accidents, such that when you look at the death statistics, railroads beat out steamboats as the leading killers of people and by a significant margin.

The end result of this was that during the late 19th century Americans had a real love-hate feeling about railroads. They liked the "romance" of trains, as well as the (relatively) new gee-whiz technology, plus the way railroads really opened up the west to development.

The negative side had to do with a couple of things. One was the way railroads killed people in small but regular numbers, a fair portion of it from negligence or bad engineering (trestle collapses). The other part of it had to do with how the many various and sundry railroads were manipulated by the various and sundry robber barons who owned them.

While trains did indeed suffer the occasional boiler explosion, it tended to be ships that had them more often, and it was the shipping industry that began to develop both better safeguards and better engineering standards, so that by the time of WWI, boiler explosions in ships were pretty much rare-to-non-existent.

And just about the time when western civilization got steam under control, along came gasoline and the infernal combustion engine.

John Brennan, homeland security advisor, is so old--and the only credible job he did during the briefing was to read the information he was holding in his hands. He took no questions. Good thing he didn't veer into harsh CIA investigation techniques, about which is probably knows more than most.

Janet Napolitano had a lot of pressure on her yesterday to look credible at the podium, especially after her huge gaffe--and subsequent calls for her resignation--that returning vets are saps who don't know any better than to fall into the hands of extremists.

Besser shone. He should be the public face for any pronouncements about swine flu. He's an actual physician with a credible resume.

And what does a Kansas governor know about health and human services? Sebelius is just as much a bureacrat as former inept SecHHS Tom Ridge of Pennsylvania. The Peter Principle applies to government as well as the private sector.

Big expose of sorts about Geither--seven jumps--about his extremely close ties to Wall Street at today's NYT. The article I've been drumming my fingers waiting for.

NPR ran a piece on the Sultana the other day. The crew and some folks below decks that heard the banging caused by installing patches knew something was wrong. Unfortunately the voyage went ahead, as the ship needed to meet it's schedule.

Mudge, addenda to your discussion about railroads: the workers, particularly the westward expansion crews after the Civil War, felt little love for their harsh and rapacious employers. This explains in part the worship via folk song of people like Jesse James and Cole Younger. Pretty Boy Floyd, too.

Slyness, you could always pick them up,put them in a maxwell house coffee can with some dirt and bring them to the next BPH.I am sure someone would love to use them.I'm sorry to say(or not) we don't have any sidewalks here in west by god.

laloomis, you ask what does a former governor knows about health and human services? Okay...let's see...the job doesn't mean treat patients, it means run an agency. Think about it. Someone who has run a state government effectively probably fits the bill.

And certainly, don't compare the TX governor to the KS one (she wins hands down), or the former PA one. Tom Ridge is well liked by many on both sides of the aisle, and has held quite a few positions in public service. Not sure what he did to earn your label of 'inept', but I'm sure you'll tell us. In exhaustive detail.

It doesn't matter if it's anti-viral medications or vaccines...the fact is TX Gov asked for more than his fair share. Taking into consideration his words of late, this takes some stones.

This virus isn't going after it's usual targets (those young, old, and/or weakened immune systems) but seems to affect those who are least vigilent about personal hygiene...teenage boys/young men. Maybe Perry should remind them to wash their hands more often, use a tissue every now and again, cover their mouth when the cough.

Sorry to feed the beast and run, but I'm due in DC this afternoon. Time to get on the road. Again. Have a happy day all.

Andrey Alexandrovich Popov invented the first boiler safety valve, the "Popov valve" in 1900. It comprised a large cork and a chain of known breaking strength. Only roughly calibrateable, it was replaced by the Vulcanized rubber and brass fixture in later years.

LiT -- yes time three to the washing of hands. By all, but also especially the fungi among us we know and love and tolerate. I believe that Sd coined this term for the ripening of the lovable blue children.

Here is a public health video about coughing and sneezing into our elbows!!!! It is the Right.Thing.to.DO.

Yes, CP, that was also part of the "hate" part of the love/hate relationship. A great many people in the 19th century really despised railroads for one reason or another. You can almost take your pick of atrocity, from stock swindles of little old ladies, to using "imported" Chinese as virtual slave labor.

And yet through all that, the railroads STILL managed to create some sort of romantic and exciting image, heaven knows how or why. Even unto this day, I am hard-pressed to think of a single pop culture reference to 19th century railraods that isn't "positive" rather than negative. Even in "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid," even though one loves Butch and Sundance, you still can't work up too much hatred of E.L. Harriman and his Union Pacific railroad for hiring the Super Posse.

Mudge, it's uncanny how not being able to practice the normal response to fire or runaway boilers (Run, Timmy! Run!) precipitated the development of fire suppression and steam boiler technology abord ship.

Jumper, snort. Heve you seen the myth busters show on exploding water heaters? It's one of my favourite. They plug the opening where the Popov valve is supposed to go with a solid plug. (Some people apparently do that becouse Popov valves are more expensive than solid plugs)
They also disabled the thermal cut-off on the thermostat. Them water heaters are made pretty tough, one of them busted at 300psi or so; destroying the house structure built around it. Myth confirmed.

Mudge, in 1882 five related families bought passage on two box cars to travel from St. Jo. MO to South Dakota. The plan was to homestead and secure quarter sections of "free" farmland. In that group were two "ruint" men who likely ruptured discs while working for the railroad. One was rather young when he was hurt. As a teen, he worked as a farmhand for Cole Younger's family (the outlaws were not at home much; traveling for biz, ya know). Cole Younger gave money to that family sporadically for a number of years. Other members of that family traveled to Stillwater Prison in MN, to see Cole Younger on more than one occasion. There was a RobinHood aspect to these games. However, they were also very "rough" men, as Cole Younger said close to the time of his trial: "We tried a desperate game and lost. But we are rough men used to rough ways, and we will abide by the consequences."

I love the sound of CSX trains in my neighborhood at night. I like seeing the old Chessie cat on aging box cars....I still see in my mind's eye the Rocky Mountain Goat logo of the Great Northern Rail; that RR had a grainery spur about two blocks from my house growing up. We knew hobos, among the last of that picaresque crew.

I never cease to be amazed at the knowledge held in the boodle. Steam boilers, who knew?

The fire department has an 1895 steamer that was used for several decades. It was traded back to the manufacturer for a newer model of fire apparatus, the manufacturer then presented it back to the City as a gift. It has been restored and is gorgeous. I understand the boiler still works.

FWIW, I was present at the last steam locomotive boiler failure in the U.S., which occurred near Gettysburg, PA in June of 1995. This was on a tourist excursion. Like most locomotive boiler failures, this was due to low water in the boiler, a result of the engine crew not checking that the water level glass was functioning properly. The good news was that the failure did not launch the boiler off the frame, and that none of the engine crew were killed on the spot. The engineer, though, suffered severe scalding burns and was left permanently disabled and died about 10 years later.

Breakfast was yummy, now you all are talking a fabulous lunch. At the club, of course? I'm gonna be virtually fat, to go along with the real fat, if you folks keep this up!

Loomis, LostinThought is correct about the running of agencies. Technical knowledge does not generally translate to good management skills; in fact, it is often a deterrence and obstacle to leading people and managing organizations.

LiT, Tom Ridge deserves a bit of thanks for his willingness to speak his mind about what he thought of the Bush Administration's phony Orange Alerts whenever their popularity would take a hit.

I guess one could say that he should have quit, but I would rather have someone working on "the team" and being a skeptic from the inside.

It will be folks like Tom Ridge who will make bipartisanship possible. AND, as pointed out about most Governors, they have to work with folks from all parts of the political spectrum.

Ridge, like several folks from the military, stepped up and spoke their mind when it wasn't considered "the thing to do."

I was lucky enough to be able to thank him for that in person last year. While what we have learned has gone so far beyond the point where Ridge had been when he "let the cat out of the bag," it was a critical signal to our nation that we had been taken for a bit of a PR ride.

Generally, the 9:38 is correct, one need only read "The Great Influenza"to learn that bacterial pneumonia sometimes complicates swine flu. But all too often, antibiotics are prescribed when unnecessary or are overprescribed, causing bacteria to mutate, creating very prolematic drug-resistant forms of bacteria.

When I had (viral vaccinia) eczema vaccinatum, Dr. Levin also was giving me shots of penicillin to prevent secondary bacterial infection, given my weakened immune system.

Lost: It doesn't matter if it's anti-viral medications or vaccines...the fact is TX Gov asked for more than his fair share. Taking into consideration his words of late, this takes some stones.

LL:Wrong. It does matter what Perry's asking for. You miss the whole issue of flu if you think that Perry is asking for a vaccine. What's a fair share? We're a border state. For a border state the issue is different, since thousands of Mexicans travel here, and the border is very open and porous. Perhaps you missed the ABC broadcast on Sunday, Bill Weir anchoring and interviewing, with the quarantined Henshaws of Cibilo. The father and sis now have flu, caught from the son, waiting for a CDC confirmation of swine flu. THe Henshaws believe that the teen son caught the flu from people from Mexico coming up for Fiesta events.

Lost: This virus isn't going after it's usual targets (those young, old, and/or weakened immune systems) but seems to affect those who are least vigilent about personal hygiene...teenage boys/young men. Maybe Perry should remind them to wash their hands more often, use a tissue every now and again, cover their mouth when the cough.

LL: This is ludicrous! That the virus has "a target" of teen boys and young men? How does this explain the 23-year-old mother in Mexico City fighting this morning for her life? The woman in Imperial Valley in California who came down with the swine flu? The wife of the man from Kansas who came home from a business trip to Mexico and passed the swine flu virus to his spouse.

slyness and shriek, where boiler technology starts to enter my area of specialization comes at the very end of the 19th century, and the development of something you likely never heard of: naptha launches.

Toward the end of the 29th c., builders of smaller boats and launches began putting smaller steam boiler systems in launches (say, 25 to 30 feet and larger) (think Bogie in the "African Queen"). The problem was the very extreme weight of a boiler system, which meant it had to be placed in the approximate center of the boat, which was the "best" part (where the most cargo could be carried). Compounded with the heavy weight of the system was the problem of fuel: you had to carry large (and heavy) amounts of coal or firewood, or whatever, to feed the boiler. Hence, you were "spending" quite a lot of effort in carrying fuel AND sacrificing the best part of your boat to the propulsion system. It wasn't critical in a 200-foot ship/paddlewheeler, but it WAS critical in a 30-foot launch.

The "solution" such as it was, was the naptha launch. This was a boat with a boiler system that used naptha (back then, "naptha" was, effectively, ordinary gasoline) both as the liquid inside the boiler, as well as the fuel lighting up the boiler. Because naptha (gasoline) boiled so much lower than water, and condensed so much easier, a nathpha boiler could be made much lighter than a comparable water boiler system. And because they used naptha (gasoline) as both fuel AND boiler liquid, a boat didn't need to carry large bunkers of coal or firewood; it could use a common tank for both fuel as well as boiler replenishment.

So the upshot was a propulsion system that burned gasoline to heat a boiler containing gasoline. This was much lighter in weight, and consequently naptha boilers were much smaller and could even be placed near the stern of a launch, allowing the middle/best part of the launch to carry cargo. Very efficient, very neat solution. A guy named Ofeldt was the principle designer/creator of this system.

There was only one teensy-tiny thing wrong. Turns out that burning gasoline to boil gasoline has one flaw: when the system failed, it failed spectacularly.

Naptha launches had a vogue from about 1890 to about 1905, when the infernal combustion engine came on line. IC engines tended to confine the gasoline explosion to the interior of the combustion chamber.

Naptha launches not so much. Which is why you may never have heard of them.

Yup, they still make it, CkwahP. Here's the Wiki write=up, somewhat condensed. I love the last line:

"Fels-Naptha is a brand of bar laundry soap used for pre-treating stains on clothing and as a home remedy for exposure to poison ivy and other skin-irritants. Fels-Naptha is manufactured by and is a trademark of the Dial Corporation.
...The soap comes packaged in paper similar to bar body soap and is most often found in the laundry section of a supermarket or grocery store. It is used in the pre-treatment of stains by rubbing the dampened product on a soiled area prior to laundering, and is claimed by the manufacturer to be most effective in removing chocolate, baby formula, perspiration, and make-up...

Fels-Naptha is also used as a home remedy in the treatment of contact dermatitis caused by exposure to poison ivy, poison oak, and other oil-transmitted organic skin-irritants. Washing the skin directly with the soap helps break up the oils that carry the toxin. Grated and added to a wash cycle, about 1/16th a bar's worth the Fels-Naptha per load, will eliminate residual resins that can remain in clothes up to a year according to the manufacturer

Health Considerations

While sometimes also sold next to personal-care body soaps it should not be used as an overall body soap or regular laundry additive since it contains Stoddard solvent, a skin and eye irritant.

According to the "Chronic Health Effects" section of the National Institutes of Health's MSDS for Fels Naptha:

Chronic toxicity testing has not been conducted on this product. However, the following effects have been reported on one of the product's components. Stoddard solvent: Repeated or prolonged exposure to high concentrations has resulted in upper respiratory tract irritation, central and peripheral nervous system effects, and possibly hematopoetic, liver and kidney effects.

Stoddard solvent is another name for mineral spirits, which are, like petroleum distillates, a mixture of multiple chemicals made from petroleum. Exposure to Stoddard solvent in the air can affect your nervous system and cause dizziness, headaches, or a prolonged reaction time. It can also cause eye, skin, or throat irritation.

"It should be noted that using Fels-Naptha as a punishment for foul language is considered highly dangerous."

My grandmother always had a couple bars of F-N soap around, and I remember being washed with it when I was a wee lad and had some poison ivy, which I did fairly regularly as a youth, running around loose in the wilderness behind our house. Musta had p-ivy two or three times a year every year. Ivy, p-oak, p-sumac, you name it, I got it. Hate that stuff.

There are about a million people in the air right now, traveling hither and yon. We are all in a "border state." If Gov. Perry, and his constituents want to continue to believe in the most exceptionalness of Texas in the spectrum of American Exceptionalism they may. It doesn't make them deserving of more than their share of treatments for the current flu. What does make Texas more deserving is needing it more, based on current rates of infection. But, providing more according to need is rather a tad socialistic and therefore not in keeping with Perry's stated aims and vision for Texans.

Did you know there was a Vladimir Popov in "The Red Balloon," weed? Don't know if he was related to Jumper's Andrei Popov of valve fame. But in the Boodle, all knowledge circles around and folds back in on itself like a Moebius strip.

Geez, Loomis, you did it again. You spoil an otherwise interesting and informative (if inclined to your idiosyncracies) series of posts with a wholly unnecessary and nasty personal attack. You raised some points. LiT responded to some. Before replying to her substantive comments, you wholly needlessly say something unkind and, to more objective and less opinionated observers, untrue. This merely undercuts any validity your comments may have and encourages people to skip your posts. You do post because you want people to read you, right? You're not content to talk to an empty room? Sometimes I wonder.

By the way, you missed one of LiT's main points, which was correct, and which you yourself buttressed. One alarming feature of this swine flu is that it is targeting, not the usual suspects, but healthy younger adults - like those women you mentioned.

Thanks for the naphtha boiler info. I can see the problem.
A water boiler only BLE (Boiling Liquid Expansion) a naphta boiler would BLEVE (Boiling Liquid Expansion Vapour Explosion). A colleague of mine was making people BLEVE propane tanks for a living for a while a few years back. Thanks to the Common Look And Feel (no moving bits, no flashing, visuals as boring as possible they removed the BLEVE films from the publicly available reports. I'm sure there are some on YouTube).
http://www.tc.gc.ca/innovation/tdc/projects/dgoods/c/8032.htm

Regarding anti-viral medications vs. vaccines. I think this can be chalked up to simple aphasia, laloomis, or even assigned to the fact that in a nontechnical discussion the distinction is not particularly important. As to whether Perry asked for "more than his fair share", I think that the central issue in the comment is the irony inherent in the contrast between Perry's braggadocio about how Texas might go its own way rather than pay taxes vs. his demands for help with exactly the kind of thing (public health policy) that Republicans claim they shouldn't be supporting with their taxes.

As to whether the virus has a target: of course a virus has targets. Viruses tend to be species-specific, which is a clear example of targeting. The relative lack of species preference in influenza is one of the things that makes it so dangerous as it hops between reservoir populations and acquires additional genetic material from them. I believe LiT was making reference to who is most likely to get the virus and to suffer the worst symptoms -- I think this was fairly clear from context. One possibility is that the worst effect (i.e., death) is found among the young and otherwise healthy because they practice poor hygiene and fail to seek expensive medical care until too late. An example of human perfidy and inequity, not a trait of the virus. The other, and much more worrisome possibility (as you should well know from your own reading), is that the flu symptomology is worst among the young and otherwise healthy for the same reason as the 1918 epidemic tended to hit that population, because it provoked an excessive immune response within those with the healthiest immune systems. Essentially, influenza-provoked suicide.

In matters of public health, the demographics of the most-severely affected (alternatively, "targeted") population are extraordinarily important. The fact that one of the influenza mortalities was a young pregnant woman does not disprove the demographic point that the primary afflicted population may be young men -- not that I know this for a fact, I am merely pointing out that a single counter-example does not demonstrate an alternative demographics. The demographics define where the most effective first-order countermeasures must be imposed.

I feel like I'm Boodlehogging here, but I feel the need to inject a few factoids into a discussion I've been trying to stay out of. But it may shed some light.

The idea that this particular swine flue is targeting teens/young adults (male or female) is both unusual and scary for this reason"

(1) There is a difference between the cohort of people that a flu or other virus tends to attack, versus who is likely to die from it. Viruses tend to attack "all" kinds of people about equally; that isn't the problem. It is that once attacked, some kinds of people are more susceptible to the let5hality than others.

The relevance here is that most flus and virus tend to be most lethal to the groups you'd expect: the "weakest," i.e. infants and old people, and anyone else with weakened immune systems. Thus in most flu epidemics it is young children and us old farts who are most at risk.

Now, here's what's scary: in the great Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918, the subject of the John Barry book Loomis mentioned, it was pointed out that the Spanish Flu was different from almost all others, because it "targeted" younger people, teens to people in their 20s, 30, and 40s, and killed them, much more so than infants and old folks. This is entirely counter-intuitive, and it took a helluva long time to figure this out and explain it. The upshot is that the Spanish Flu of 1918, which quite properly still scares the bejaysus out of everyone, specifically attacked the immune system, and it appears that's where it replicated. Hence, the Spanish flu tended to kill people with *strong* immune systems (people in their teens, 20s, 30s) and tended to let babies and old folks recover more or less like "ordinary" flu.

Insofar as the early reports seem to show, *this* swine flu seems to be doing the same thing as the 1918 Spanish flu: targeting (or at least killing) people with strong immune systems (i.e. teens, people in their 20s, etc.). So it is no wonder this thing is scaring the crap out of people.

(2) There is -- or ought to be -- a gigunda proviso in all of this, which is that so far, we have very limited numbers on this swine flu, and I don't think the numbers are yet anywhere near high enough to start drawing conclusions about whom it is targeting or how and why. 10 cases here and 20 cases there and 50 more over yonder is NOT statistically enough to start making conclusions with. All the "vectors" seem to be pointing to Mexico, just as the SARS vectors pointed to China, and the 1918 Spanish flu vectors pointed to Ft. Riley, Kansas. But the actual location means nothing in and of itself. This one appears to be Mexico, SARS was China, 1918 was Kansas (maybe), the Legionnaires Disease (a bacteria, not a virus) came from the Bellevue Stratford Hotel in Philly, etc.

The specific location, in and of itself, doesn't mean much. These things can break out pretty much anywhere.

(3) This thing is still *very* new, and I doubt we have anything even close to sufficient knowledge about its origins, causation (whether swine or avian), etc. All we know right now is a bunch of people in Mexico got it first and worst.